Introducing structured menus in the Google My Business API

Aditya Tendulkar

Product Manager, Google My Business

April 26, 2017

Every day, millions of people search on Google for places to eat and drink and many click to see the menu before making a decision. In fact, the Google search interest in "menu" related queries has seen a 30% increase in the last 2 years*. For businesses, this means they need to provide useful and relevant information to their customers in these moments that matter.

Last December, we enabled Menu URL editing in the Google My Business API allowing businesses to control and manage their menu link on Google Maps and Search. Starting today, businesses that use the Google My Business API can publish their entire menu to Google —itemized with descriptions, photos and prices--making it frictionless for their customers to view their menus on Google.

Arby’s, the quick-serve fast-food sandwich restaurant chain, was one of the first to take advantage of this feature and publish their full menu to Google. Now customers who search on Google for Arby’s can find accurate and up-to-date menu information provided by Arby’s as well as photos of those menu items.

"We update our menu every month with new and limited time offers. With the new Google My Business Menu feature we now have control over our menu data. We are able to provide our menu updates directly to Google via the Yext platform, and our updated menu populates on Google almost instantly. We no longer have to worry about old, unavailable menu items from third party sites showing up." said Sonja Uppal, Arby’s Digital Marketing Supervisor.

Developers can now use the Google My Business API to publish menu data to each of their business locations and see it update on Google in minutes. They’ll be able to publish multiple menus (e.g. breakfast, lunch, dinner) with sections (e.g. salads, entrees, dessert, drinks) that include individual menu items, each with a rich description, photo and price. It's easy to get started with our new developer documentation.

Here's a simple JSON request that shows how to publish a simple breakfast menu to a location: